This year’s Electronic Sports League will culminate with ESL One – New York, the main event which will take place at the Madison Square Garden Theater in New York, USA on October 3-4.
The world’s best DOTA 2 teams will take part in this competition as invited teams Team Secret, CDEC Gaming, Virtus.pro, and Evil Geniuses Dota2 will be challenged by qualifiers Vega Squadron, FIRE, Fnatic.Dota2, and EHOME.
Vega, a team from the Russian Federation, emerged from the European qualifiers after it won against Ninjas in Pyjamas, 3-1, in the final round, which was held from August 31 to September 6. US squad FIRE went through the North American qualis, sweeping compLexity Gaming DotA 2 in the final round, before reaching the main event.
Fnatic of Malaysia beat others from the Southeast Asian region, while EHOME came out on top against Invictus Gaming in the qualifiers held in China.
In the best of three quarterfinals on October 3, Europe-based Secret goes up against Fnatic and FIRE confronts CDEC of China, with the winners going to face each other in the best of three semifinals. VP skirmishes against EHOME, while EG meets Vega in the other half of the bracket. The finals on October 4 will be a best-of-five affair.
As world number one, Team Secret is expected to give Fnatic a hard game. The former has its opponent’s number, winning over Fnatic in four of their last five encounters. They last met to a draw at The International 2015.
CDEC, China’s third best team, goes opposite an unranked team on an upswing. This is expected to be an interesting matchup no matter what the betting odds would say.
Another Chinese team in EHOME battles a fellow top ten squad in VP. In their only meeting, EHOME defeated Virtus, 2-0.
Former world number one EG clashes Vega for the first time. Evil Geniuses last saw action at The International in August 2015, and the team would want to take back the top spot of the rankings with a good showing at ESL One.
The champion DOTA 2 squad will take the biggest slice from the 250,000 USD prize pool, a guaranteed 100,000 USD with bonuses to be added coming from tournament sales and crowdfunding.
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